Transcript of America's First VPN Ban: What Comes Next?

U.S. states are coming after VPNs. That's impossible! Michigan went after it last month, and now we start seeing more states, as of recent, go after it, like Wisconsin. Let's talk about this, why it matters, and what we do. To set the situation properly, we actually have to go back to earlier this year, and it's something that we've been talking about here on the channel. It happened in the U.K., and it's happening in many other places, which is age verification. The idea is we can save the kids from corn. And yes, we are all about keeping children safe, but it's very well established that age verification laws don't really do that. And they are, as the EFF says, just a backdoor to surveillance. Not only are they a backdoor into surveillance for also adults, but children as well. In fact, we've already seen age verification lead to making children less safe. The Discord hack as of recent impacted Discord's age verification process, which ended up leaking the IDs, personal information, home addresses, etc. of children because they were collecting children's data and not storing it securely. This isn't an isolated incident either. Last year, we saw age verification through Authentics left login credentials exposed for more than a year, allowing access to their sensitive information either. And they are also a government issued ID age verification system. So we put these laws out there that not only in some ways jeopardize children more than if they didn't exist, but they also jeopardize the privacy and the overall freedom of the internet for literally everyone, including you and other adults. So naturally, what do most people do? They use a VPN. And for everybody who's out there thinking of using VPNs, let me just say to you directly, let's just not try and find a way around. Just prove your age, make the internet safer for children, making it a better experience for everyone. Now, some US politicians saw this advice and went, hmm, can we pass a law for that? And yes. So as of this writing, which was a few days ago, Wisconsin lawmakers are escalating their war on privacy by targeting VPNs in the name of protecting children in AB 105 and SB 130. You can actually read these bills yourself. I will leave them in the description. The EFF is a wonderful digital rights org and their coverage, I feel like is pretty fair. So I'll be continuing to use them. This bill has already passed the state assembly and is now moving through the Senate. And if it becomes law, Wisconsin would now become the first state where using a VPN to access certain content is banned. I already mentioned Michigan, which has proposed something similar, which did not move through its legislature, but among other things would still force internet providers to actively monitor and block VPN connections. As in the UK, officials are calling VPNs a loophole that needs closing. Now, Techlore actually started as a VPN channel. So I can definitely talk quite a bit about VPNs and we still host an open source VPN chart as kind of a continuation of what we used to do. What a VPN does is a third party, typically a VPN provider, will essentially encrypt traffic on your computer and become the middleman. You're handing over trust from your ISP to your VPN. And it's a fairly similar technology, whether you're using it for business or to get around Netflix streaming restrictions or to just get some better privacy. There's different VPNs for different use cases, but they all overall function in a similar way. This is almost technically impossible. Websites, let's say DuckDuckGo, Google, Brave, whatever, have no way to tell if a VPN connection is coming from Milwaukee, Michigan, or Mumbai. The technology doesn't work that way. What they're trying to say is if I'm in California, you're in France, and one of our friends is in Germany, and we all connect to the same VPN server, Google doesn't know where we're actually from. So there's no way for websites to go, oh, this person is clearly a resident of Wisconsin, so we can't let them in because they're using a VPN and they're a Wisconsin resident. Unless, of course, this is combined with age verification and every site becomes age verified, which is ideally also not something that is being pursued because that would be just horrendous. So what's more realistic is websites like the ones I listed either cease operation in Wisconsin or they just block all VPN users everywhere to avoid liability. What that means is one state passing a terrible law, it can actually impact a lot of the internet, all because of their own freaking problems and their inability to understand how complicated the situation really is, how difficult it is to keep children safe without also harming children in the process and especially harming the rest of society. And this isn't just those people. Journalists rely on VPNs. Abuse survivors rely on VPNs. Regular people like me use VPNs just for basic safety. Businesses use VPNs. I use a VPN to connect to my NAS that you can see behind me. International students, researchers, literally so many people have genuine use cases for VPNs. And based on this broad, weird approach that Wisconsin is taking to try to deal with the problem in the easiest, laziest way possible, they are jeopardizing all of this beautiful technology. Now, these VPN bans are coming up almost as a direct response to age verification. We cannot lose sight of that. They're not just coming forward and saying we don't like VPNs. They're trying to really get age verification across, which, as we've talked about, have serious problems and restrict access to important information. Websites like Blue Sky have even been forced to block users in several states to avoid liability. This is extremely bad for censorship. It's bad for freedom of information. It's bad for privacy. And age verification can destroy a lot of the amazing aspects of the Internet. And the VPN ban is a direct response to people trying to avoid what is actually a dangerous thing. And the ironic part is that the same thing will happen with VPNs if they are banned. And the EFF speaks to this as well. People will bypass this and they're going to start using non-commercial VPNs, open proxies, cheap virtual servers that the laws don't cover. They're going to find the workarounds. And I guarantee you the workarounds are going to keep those people even a little bit less safe than a VPN would. And we're going to keep playing this cat and mouse game all because of lazy legislation. And I think that is the only way to describe this stuff. It's lazy. It is taking the easiest possible approach that has a ton of problems to a very complicated problem that these people either don't understand or they just don't want to bother with in an actual nuanced way that incorporates what everybody really needs from the situation. Finding ways to keep children safe is super important and a lot of people are trying to do this and it's a very good cause, but there are ways to do that without sacrificing the entire way the internet works and destroying freedom of information along the way. The really sad thing about all of this is that banning VPNs has already been a problem in what we consider very censorship-heavy countries like China and Russia, and they've been doing this stuff for years now. So to see this stuff start to pop up in the free West is actually very concerning and should really make people think about the direction that things are going in, not just in the US, but in the UK, in the EU, in Canada, and everywhere else that we've started to see this age verification stuff pop up, which is also typically associated with banning VPNs next because of people who work around the age verification laws. And here's the other sad thing. If VPNs are banned, which is a thing in Russia and China, and you can't really get them from the app stores there. And when we see people like Google starting to lock down Android to prevent side loading, this also fuels into this as well. It means it's harder for you to work around all of these different systems to still install a VPN to work around this junk. The EFF puts it beautifully. People have predictably turned to VPNs to protect their privacy as they watched age verification mandates proliferate around the world. Instead of taking this as a sign that maybe mass surveillance isn't popular, lawmakers have decided the real problem is that these privacy tools exist at all and are trying to ban the tools that let people maintain their privacy. If lawmakers genuinely care about young people's well-being, they should invest in education, support parents with better tools, and address the actual root causes of harm online. What they shouldn't do is wage war on privacy itself. Attacks on VPNs are attacks on digital privacy and digital freedom. And this battle is being fought by people who clearly have no idea how any of this technology actually works. And I cannot have said it better than the EFF. And of course, this article will be in the description. So what can you do? One, actually use a VPN. Normalize using a VPN. Our chart is open source. The first several providers at the top are open source. You can just click a few of them and then click compare. And it's going to tell you what you need to know about the services. I'm personally using Proton right now, and I will go ahead and leave an affiliate link down in the description, as well as a regular link if you don't want to use the affiliate one. But ultimately, I'd say the chart is the best resource if you want to see one that works for you. Second, the EFF has instructions to this. Reach out to your senator. They include a link right here. And I will also leave the direct link for this down in the description. You're going to see all these different numbers. You're going to find where you live, especially if you're in Wisconsin. You're going to click a number, and it's going to tell you who you're represented by. has their phone number and it has their email. Your job is to urge them to kill AB-105 and SB-130. Make it personal. Actually tell them about your story and also don't leave a comment saying that this doesn't work. I've been doing coverage about Chat Control, which is the EU's attempt to ban end-to-end encryption. All of you really stepped up. Everyone was outraged and contacted the representatives. And guess what? Chat Control was at least temporarily paused and is no longer an immediate concern as of the time of recording, but this stuff is changing like daily. So we'll see what actually happens, but it was enough to push this down the road. And we can do the same here in the US. So please don't think you're useless. Actually go ahead and submit this, especially if you're in Wisconsin. If you're in any other state, you can still reach out to your representatives and just tell them, hey, I am seeing this trend of age verification and banning VPNs, not just in the other US states, but also in other countries. And I want to make sure that you are aware that this is a serious problem and I don't support any of this. You can still get ahead of issues with your representatives. And finally, you can support organizations like the EFF. They're doing amazing coverage of this and they have an awesome legal team to help battle some of this stuff and they do great behind the scenes work. Digital rights aren't about hiding, they're about autonomy, security, privacy, and the freedom to explore the internet and be yourself without being tracked and without feeling like there's someone looking over your shoulder and trying to control who you are and what you believe in. This is why we need to be intentional with technology, follow what's going on, and make sure to get active and actually be a part of these fights. Not just as consumers, but as citizens who are shaping our digital futures. This stuff impacts what the internet's going to look like in one month, one year, 10 years, and even the next generation. If you like this coverage and want to keep up with what's going on, you can, of course, subscribe to Techlore down in the description. We're on Patreon. You can support us on YouTube directly as like a YouTube member thingy. We also have a forum. We accept Monero if you just want to do a one-off tip privately and also share some legitimate use cases you have for your VPN. If you have a VPN enabled when you're watching this, let us know down in the comments why you have it enabled in the first place and let's normalize VPN usage. There's nothing wrong with using a VPN and we can't let these people change our minds. Speaking of VPNs, they were actually referenced as one of the many tools because VPNs are not an all-in-one privacy tool. in our top encrypted services video where I talk about many other tools outside VPNs to help keep yourself and the people around you safe online. So go check out that video. People really seem to like it. And I'll see you all next time on Techlore.